splitting the atom
by hyacinthian
Summary: the aftermath of breaking up is the falling apart. post the worst couple. beck x jade.


He doesn't open the door, and he knows everyone is watching him to see what he's going to do. He's a performer at heart, and already he can sense the atmosphere shift – tense before, sure, but now, slightly uncomfortable. They don't know what to do with him. (To be honest, he doesn't know what to do with him either.) They have always operated as a pair – Beck and Jade, Jade and Beck – and that was what made them – the group, not _them _– work; he knows that Jade has never been the most popular person in the group and he wonders how the balance will shift.

"Hey, man," Andre says. "You okay?"

He claps his hands together. "Let's play some cards."

It's not really playing cards when they let him win the next four rounds out of pity, so he agrees to play 52 card pickup with Cat just so he can spend his time, spend his _thoughts _on something else. (Trina sneaks him some liquor, and yeah, okay, that helps a little bit.)

Tori keeps looking at him like he's some kind of lost puppy she could save, and that's when he decides it's time to leave.

* * *

He starts a letter to Jade at half past midnight that night. It doesn't get very far. He doesn't know what he wants to say or how to phrase it or if any of his thoughts even make sense or if it's fair to even try to talk to her after what he did. (Or what she did. Like all wars, he's somehow forgotten who fired the first shot although part of him is absolutely convinced that it was her, that she had come up with the idea to count and to present him with yet another ultimatum, to use his affection for her against other people. And part of him thinks that he's full of shit. The problem being that he believes both parts.)

_Jade,_

I just want you to know that I love

He stops there. The question of tenses – how could he have forgotten? _Love _or _loved _and there's too many questions he wasn't ready to ask himself yet. He loved her, that he knows, but now that they've downshifted, now that he's about an hour into tomorrow and their Slap profiles have changed, he doesn't know if that's a thing that he can still say. Yes, he loved her, loved her more than anyone else he ever dated, and maybe loved her more than his family, than himself, but now?

He shoves the letter – the sentence – in the bottom of his desk drawer and slams it shut.

Tomorrow.

* * *

Jade skips lunch the next day, and most of their shared classes.

Andre keeps trying to cheer him up by talking about writing him a theme song, a little six-note melody or something that plays when he enters a room. Kind of like the _Seinfeld _riff but less jazz. By the time they hit sixth period, Andre's got it down on the synthesizer, a little tacky six-note theme.

By the time they step into Sikowitz's class, Andre plays it again, and Beck laughs. Doesn't stop – everything about this is suddenly so funny: the fact that he has a theme song, the fact that he hasn't seen Jade all day, the fact that none of his friends know what to do with either of them, the fact that he can't even begin to act like everything's fine.

He laughs and he doesn't know why it makes him think of Jade, but it does, and he steps out in the middle of class to wander the halls.

Maybe that's the joke, he thinks: the moment they decided they would never think of each other in that way, he can't stop thinking about her.

It's funny if you think about it.

Give it a minute.

* * *

There's a play they auditioned for once – one of the senior showcases for graduation. They chose to audition together (and she got called back and he didn't, and what did that mean then? Was it a sign he chose to ignore?): she, Elsie, the vindictive, bitter farmer's daughter, and him, Buckley, the fast-tracked medical school flunk.

Her hair was down then, the dye already fading. _It was never enough to want things, was it, Buck? You had to go and destroy as many worlds as you could._

A beat, then, before his snide reply: _At least I tried to conquer some._

It was some kind of melodrama, he remembers – all failed love affairs and dying friends and being trapped in the same town. Not too unlike LA, if he thinks about it. (The point, of course: to not think about it.)

* * *

Andre takes him out to get drunk (by which Andre means watch Beck get drunk and then safely, soberly designated-drive him back to his trailer) that weekend. There's a lot of shots of whiskey and it's only after the fourth or fifth that he thinks that this was Jade's drink, wasn't it, and ha ha ha he can't get her out of his system, keeps flooding his own system with memories of her and isn't that funny isn't that just so poetic and just isn't that fucking incredible.

He might have blurted all this out to Andre; he isn't quite sure what stays in his head and what comes out of his mouth.

Andre doesn't say anything.

The second letter goes like this, and is written on a cocktail napkin, the ink bleeding through from the condensation of his drinks:

_Jade West,_

I hate you so much. It isn't fair [ink blot, pink stain]

I tried, you know.

* * *

He wakes up in his trailer on his bed with his shoes off, sneakers untied and lying neatly by the door, still in his clothes from last night.

The cocktail napkin jammed in his front jeans pocket.

Andre calls him around two. "How are you feeling?"

"Like waffles," he says.

They meet at Beck's favourite waffle place and he tries to make his hangover go away through pure force of sugar and dough alone. It doesn't quite work, but it comes close.

"You want to talk?" Andre asks, as he reaches for the syrup.

He and Andre haven't been particularly close...ever, and it's not like they're the kind of guys who talk about their feelings all the time, but Beck appreciates the gesture. He gives a half shrug.

"You know," Andre says, stabbing at a piec e of waffle, "You wrote an entire poem for her on a separate napkin."

"What happened to it?"

He winces. "You, uh, wrote it, read it to anyone who would listen, and like an hour later, you used it to light your cigarette."

"That good?"

They've splintered, he thinks – Tori and Cat with Jade, and he gets Andre and Robbie, and sadly, also Rex. They can only keep pretending that the group is the same for so long before they have to stare the elephant in the room in the face. No use denying it.

"I should talk to Jade, huh?"

Andre shrugs. "You should do whatever you want to do."

"That's not really helpful."

"Yeah, well," Andre deadpans. "I'm not Oprah, so just eat your damn waffle."

* * *

The bottom of his desk drawer collects all of his unfinished letters addressed to Jade; the fuller his drawer gets, the more he wonders if it's enough to comprise an entire memory, much less their entire relationship. Most of the slips of paper are torn off scraps from Algebra II, with formulas barely-there on the torn edges, and one-liners that he thought of in study hall or at lunch or in class.

Things he wishes he could be able to tell her. Things he wishes he could begin to understand.

The last one that he puts in his desk drawer comes in the middle of English class, some kind of discussion on The Great Gatsby and the failure of the American Dream – a quick jotted note next to Daisy Buchanan's name and background –

_When I told you I wasn't happy with our relationship, I didn't mean it._

* * *

It isn't like he has an epiphany or anything, but it's as close as he's going to get. The rest of the letter comes in bits and pieces – _When I told you I wasn't happy with our relationship, I was talking about me. Just me. It had nothing to do with you._

He let her walk away because he had to. He had to let himself fall in the deep end for once in his life and figure out whether he'd end up floating or sinking. Beck's lived so much of his life tangential to other people and other things – his trailer outside his parents' house, floating between the programs at Hollywood Arts – and Jade became the spine of the camel and the straw that broke it.

(If push came to shove, he's always envied her for her sense of self. Who is Beck Oliver, anyway? And what is he compared to Jade West? There's a reason people can do impressions of her – even if she hates them – and there's a reason why people walk around afraid of her and in awe of her, and it has nothing to do with him.

And what has he been other than her boyfriend? He's been the nice one, sure, the one who's been there to calm her down so she can go and socialize with other people, but they don't know him at all. He doesn't know him.)

And there is the problem.

As much as he loved Jade, as much as he wanted to spend all of his time with her, part of him hated her for that ease she had in knowing who she was, in never having to try to figure out what was her and what was her trying to impress people. (Not that Jade would ever feel the need to try to impress anyone.) And here is Beck Oliver, who impresses no one with anything other than the fact that he has made Jade love him, who is an actor because he can't figure out any part of himself, who acts because he needs to try on other people to figure out which works the best for him.

The biggest realization: that Hollywood Arts is here to help him figure out who he is – and not in the metaphorical way – as much as it is for him to pick a career path. Even Trina knows who she is. Even Rex, and he's not even real.

_I hated you for knowing who you were when I didn't know who I was. And I didn't want you to tell me._

And wasn't it easy? To let the sins collect against Jade for just being Jade, every single minute she spent yelling at other people, yelling at him, kissing him, being sweet to him, yelling at other people, acting, dancing, singing – everything she did suddenly became some kind of offense against him, and yes, he gets that that's irrational, and yes, he understands that's selfish and unfair, but, well, it isn't exactly like he ever claimed to be a good person, was it?

The thing no one has ever understood: if anything, Jade West has made him a better person than he was ever going to be without her.

* * *

There was Beck-and-Jade, and Jade-and-Beck, and Jade West.

What people forget about fairy tales is that the Princes Charming never have names; they're identified by title, by rank.

_I didn't mean to hurt you_, he writes. Strike that. _I'm sorry I hurt you._

And maybe it was selfish – all right, it was definitely selfish – but maybe he's a selfish person. And maybe he's a bad person. And maybe she was the thing that came closest to saving him. And at night, when he heads back to his trailer, and there's her things lying everywhere – one of her t-shirts hanging on the back of his chair, a necklace around a doorknob, the smell of her shampoo all over his sheets – it's hard not to call her up and tell her that he misses her, that he misses touching her and the way she hummed in her sleep, the way she kicked him when she stole the sheets, how she'd steal his food and manage to slip some of hers onto his plate when he wasn't looking – yeah, okay, maybe if he's being honest on the good days, he'll say that he misses that and when he says he misses that, he means he misses her, and it was all his fault anyway because he was the one that admitted on a live game show – god, he's a fucking idiot – that he wasn't happy with their relationship and that they needed to talk about it. Them. Whatever.

_I wasn't sick of the fighting._

He always understood where he was because of her and now he's left trying to figure out where he was and how deep into the forest he's gone and whether or not he has a chance of making it out alive.

_I was just tired._

* * *

Tori stops by his trailer and fishes through the letters in the desk drawer. (She asks first because she's Tori and he can't help but think that Jade would have gone in without asking, without _thinking _just because whatever belonged to him was so much hers.)

"You ever going to mail these?" she asks, having skimmed through half of the stack. He shrugs, shaking fish food into his tank. "Or give them to her?"

Tori hums; he knows she probably already knows the answer.

"It's weird," Tori continues. "Without you guys being, you know, you guys."

"It was time for a break," he says. Tori sniffs, and someone's PearPhone goes off. "How many people do you know make it through high school still together anyway?"

Tori sniffs. "I don't know."

"Exactly."

"But you guys weren't exactly ... people." She drops the stack of notes on the floor. "I didn't mean it that way, I meant – " Her elbow knocks the rest of them to the ground.

"I know what you meant," he says.

Tori's already apologizing, stooping to the carpet of his trailer to pick up the fallen letters. "_Sometimes I think I loved you more than I loved anyone else._"

"Maybe you should go," Beck says.

Tori leaves that note on top of the pile.

* * *

Jade corners him in the choir room a few days later. They haven't really spoken since the break-up so the fact that there's no other people around just makes it seem so much quieter than it actually is. She brushes her palms against her jeans, and he finds he can't look her in the eye.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey."

"Um, I just wanted to let you know, I drove to your trailer in my free period, and I took all my stuff. Left the key on your desk, so you don't have to worry about me coming around anymore." Her voice steady and solid when she speaks – and then there is that little thought that she is better without him, that she has found someone else, found someone better, who has their shit together and knows what they want and can fuck her better than he ever could or did – and he just clenches his jaw and nods.

She's a better actress than him too – can't forget that either.

His whole body seems tense, too tight and taut and he knows he can't break, doesn't want to break in front of her, not in this situation; every part of him aches, and he wonders if it's physical or mental or one affecting the other, but he doesn't think he's ever felt so empty in his entire life. He wants to ask her to stay.

"Okay," he says. "Good."

She doesn't even wince. (Maybe he's forgotten how she shouldn't be underestimated either; she was always the stronger one.)

* * *

The first thing that strikes him about his trailer is how empty it seems. More than before.

The little touches of hers are missing, even. The picture of them when they went to the beach for the first time, her knick-knacks, the little fuzzy koosh balls she'd stashed all over the place because she'd told him he looked too stressed one day and decided to hide them everywhere in case he needed an outlet when she wasn't around, the little notes they'd written each other once they'd passed dating into something more serious.

The lamp he'd gotten her for one of their arbitrary anniversaries that she'd kept in his trailer.

Her contacts cases, spare toothbrush, spare make-up, spare everything. She's removed every trace of Jade from his life that she could have.

In his desk drawer, the letters – still neatly arranged from Tori's last visit.

* * *

Even the sheets smell less like her now.

* * *

In the end, this break has to be a good thing. Or, that's what he keeps telling himself anyway. What were they going to do when college came around? Or what if she didn't want to stay in LA? Or what if he'd landed something and she didn't?

He just never anticipated how much he needed her. How much he was used to having her be there. He wants to write down a list of things he knows about himself –knows to be absolutely true –now that she isn't here, but right now, all he can think to put on the list is: _My name is Beck Oliver and my birthday is February 9_.

(The only person he can think to share this with is Cat. She brings him a coloring book, and tells him it's always helped her with her feelings.)

* * *

The last post-breakup letter he writes her:

_Sometimes I don't think I could love anyone else._

* * *

Friday night, he invites Andre over and they take the whole stash of notes into his parents' backyard and light a campfire. (In recognition of the sanctity of the situation, Andre does not, as originally suggested, bring marshmallows.)

Andre says, "Man, y'all are messed up."

Beck slings an arm around his shoulders.

* * *

Sometimes he wonders if she writes him letters.


End file.
